Coven

impressed.

He took them down and packed them neatly into their incubreedcatalyzationcapsules, then activated the final exponentialcellularfissionsequence on the functionplate. Easy as pi. Next he grabbed the sludge jugs and extromitted from the germinationwarren. He left through pointaccessmain#l.

The Dodge Colt was waiting. He drove away from the labyrinth through the green, settled fog. Unseen things crunched as he drove over them. Veined plants with bulbs large as human heads collapsed under the bumper, and filmy eyes viewed him from ripples in the fog. The entire grove teemed in low moonlight. When he pulled into the secreted graveyard, Roxy’s version of “In the Midnight Hour” came on the radio. What a great song to dig graves to!

Humming, he emptied the sludge jugs into the sump. Then he spied the second mound. Well, I’ll be! Penelope’s arms and flabby head had emerged. The rubber limbs flapped vainly against the dirt. Jervis jammed the shovel handle into her face and shoved her back down the hole. She mewled in protest. “Oh, don’t be such a baby,” he quipped Monty Python. He filled in the little tunnel she’d dug, then stomped on it. The woods shuddered. He could hear her howling underneath.

He dug two more graves, smiling to himself. Digging graves in the middle of the night had a certain charm. He dragged the two big garbage bags from the car. The first contained David “Do-Horse” Willet, or what was left of him. Mostly sinewy bones, an emptied skull, and intestines. Jervis buried the bag in the first grave.

The second bag contained—

“Mr. Czanek!” Jervis exclaimed. “I never forget a face, not even a split one! How’s business, buddy?”

Czanek lay in two clean pieces, bifurcated. Tom had done an impressive job with the hewer—right down the middle, perfect.

He buried Czanek in the second grave. Four mounds now stood in the silent clearing. He wondered how many more there would be when they left.

Jervis, who was more self aware than the average reanimated corpse, paused for reflection. My Existenz has found me, he pondered. I’m the right hand of destiny. Pure selfhood for a higher meaning. I am the ultimate existential man.

He wiped off his hands and got back in the Dodge. Now that the dirty work was done, the real fun could begin.

««—»»

The Supremate smiled over them all, his children.

He watched from dozens of different places at once, heard, saw and felt all that his children did. The one called Besser was drawing up the departure assignments, which were vital to the Supremate. The stasisfield grew low; soon the labyrinth would become vulnerable. According to the dataprobe that had been sent long ago, the ruling classes here might now have the technological capabilities to break the labyrinth during a weakened charge. Such calamities were rare, but they’d happened. One labyrinth, several thousand years ago, had never made it off its targetobjective. The natives had not been friendly: The duty supremate had been executed, its daughters slaughtered. Fissionizationvessels had been raped en masse, and holotypes had been burned as fuel or dissected for research.

—DISGRACE, the Supremate thought.

The one called Winnifred was with Besser, too. She sat masturbating in a chair. Sometimes a nativeemissarial would not remain serviceable after the exordipathicsignaltrances, exposure to the psilight, and the Supremate’s overall influence. But she had helped in minor ways and had shown great faith. Too bad she would have to die. And Besser, the rotund one, too.

The Supremate continued its overseeing. Two sisters were inspecting the Erbling subjects in the activeport. The Hartley subject had already birthed her first metisunit, which now squalled healthily in the biomaintenancecarbonsourcehypersaturationvault. Many more sisters worked throughout the labyrinth, happy and close to mindless in the discharge of their duties. The sisters were all integrated into the Supremate—prime, living examples of the master plan’s capabilities.

—SO WHAT IF I CAN’T BE GOD, the Supremate mused. —COULD GOD DO ALL OF THIS?

««—»»

Shauna Applegate stared into her ENG 291 text, bored shitless. Her roommate, Inez Packer, sat in the next room, doing much the same. They were both in academic hot water. They were reading about how F. Scott Fitzgerald had died in disgrace, wholly despised by the literary community of the times, even though he was a better writer than any of his contemporaries. But of course, Shauna and Inez couldn’t’ve shit cared less. They’d rather be partying.

Just as Shauna thought she’d die of boredom, someone knocked on the door. “Who is it?” she asked.

“Sushi Express.”

Sushi? Yuck! “Inez! Did you order any carry out sushi?”

“Yuck!” Inez responded. “No way!”

“You must have the wrong—” But when Shauna looked in the peephole, she gasped. A dead man’s face grinned back at her.

“Go away!” she shouted, checking the lock. “I’ll call the cops!”

“All right,” said the voice. “I’m going away.”

The hewer cut the door down in one strike. Shauna screamed as Jervis let himself in. A sister drifted in behind him.

“Are you Inez Packer?” he politely inquired.

“N no, she’s in the—”

Jervis brought the hewer down spectacularly—wooosh!—and sheared Shauna Applegate in half, from head to crotch. Shauna’s two halves twitched on the carpet. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about that goddamn English class anymore.

Inez had seen it all from her room (your roommate being cut in half by a dead man with a beam hewer was a hard thing to miss). She screamed steadily and threw books. The Great Gatsby hit Jervis in the head. The Beautiful and the Damned popped him in the groin. When she slammed her door closed, Jervis hewed it down. “Miss Packer?” he announced. “Your limo is waiting.” He lifted Inez up by the hair. The sister’s spicule darted out in a pink blur.

Inez turned limp, bewildered and paralyzed. Jervis carried her out to the Dodge as the sister knelt at Shauna’s halves, to eat.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing there?” a skinny security guard demanded on the exit stairs.

“I’m abducting a healthy female college student for bifertilization with alien holotypes,” Jervis answered, and palmed the guard hard enough in the face to drive bone shards into his brain. With his free hand then, Jervis dragged the guard out by the eye sockets, kind of like carrying a bowling ball, and loaded them both into the Dodge Colt. Thank heaven for hatchbacks!

Back upstairs, the kneeling sister seemed disappointed. This was the same sister who had eaten David “Do Horse” Willet’s penis the night before.

—Jervis? How come there’s no…

Didn’t these crossmultibredintegratedhybrid airheads know anything? “She’s a girl, pinhead,” Jervis apprised. “Girls don’t have dicks.”

—Oh, the sister said. —Poo!

««—»»

They sat opposed, staring into each other’s face. Wade had told Lydia what he’d seen at the grove. Lydia had told Wade what she’d seen at the second mound. Neither doubted the other.

“Can two people go nuts at the same time?” Wade asked. “Maybe campus utilities is pumping LSD into the